Sylvia and Aaron chat with Cris Shore (Professor of Social Anthropology at Goldsmiths) about his work on corruption in the European Union. We talk about the EU's "parallel system of administration,"  methodologies for studying that which should not be seen, the trouble defining corruption, the weaponization of anti-corruption laws, university/academic corruption, the rise of "audit culture,"  and "shit swimming" (a surfers' campaign against corruption in sewage management), and legalized corruption in Britain.  Some of Cris Shore's Publications2024. Compliance, Defiance, and ‘Dirty’ Luxury: New Perspectives on Anti-Corruption in Elite Contexts. Edited by Tereza Østbø Kuldova, Jardar Østbø, and Cris Shore. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.2024. (with Susan Wrights). Audit Culture: How Indicators and Rankings are Reshaping the World. London: Pluto Press.  2021. "Audit Failure and Corporate Corruption: Why Mediterranean Patron-Client Relations are Relevant to Understanding the Word of International Accountability Firms." Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology 90: 91-105.2005. (with Deiter Haller) Corruption: Anthropological Perspectives. London: Pluto Press. 

A chat with Anu Sharma about corruption in India, gender empowerment, and transparency laws. Discussion on anti-corruption efforts evolving from NGOs to political parties. Exploring Gandhi's image in anti-corruption movements and the intersection of corruption discourse with ideological movements. Delving into the complexities of transparency, corruption, and good governance in India.

Alan Smart, a researcher on Chinese practices of gift-mediated friendship and informality in Hong Kong's squatter settlements, discusses the role of guanxi relations in capitalist ventures and the importance of informality in Hong Kong. Topics include corruption, challenges faced by outside investors in China, maintaining embeddedness in business, the role of squatters in Hong Kong, archival work, and distinguishing corruption from care in academia.

Sylvia and Aaron chat with Dr. Smoki Musaraj about her book, Tales from Albarado: Ponzi Logics of Accumulation in Postsocialist Albania (Cornell University Press, 2020). We discuss the forms of corruption (and corruption allegations) that arose during Albania's rapid transition from an insular command economy to a neoliberal capitalist economy. Smoki takes us through her work on ponzi schemes, satyrical anti-corruption television,  kin-focused remittences from Albanians working abroad, and the use of corruption allegations for partisan ends. Below are some of Smoki Musaraj's recent works: Smoki Musaraj and Nataša Gregoriç Bon. 2021. “Introduction: Remitting, Restoring and Building Contemporary Albania.” In Remitting, Building, and Restoring the Contemporary Albania. Palgrave Macmillan.Smoki Musaraj. 2021. "Temporalities of Concrete in a Postcommunist City." In Remitting, Building, and Restoring the Contemporary Albania. Palgrave Macmillan.Musaraj, Smoki. 2019. “The Magic of Pyramid Firms: Political Cosmologies, Credibility and Collapsed Finance” Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology. 84(2): 179-200.Maurer, Bill, Smoki Musaraj, and Ivan Small. Editors. 2018. Money at the Margins: Global Perspectives on Technology, Inclusion and Design (opens in a new window). New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. (The Human Economy Series, Eds. Keith Hart and John Sharp).Musaraj, Smoki. 2018 “Corruption, Right On! Hidden Cameras, Satire and Intimacies of Anti-corruption.” Current Anthropology. 59 (S18): S105-S116.Musaraj, Smoki and Ivan Small. 2018. "Introduction: Money and Finance at the Margins.: In Money at the Margins: Global Perspectives on Technology, Inclusion and Design. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. pp. 1-18.Musaraj, Smoki. 2018. “Corruption Indicators in the Local Legal/Political Landscape: Reflections from Albania. In The Palgrave Handbook of Indicators in Global Governance by Indicators. Eds. Deborah Valentina Malito, Gaby Umbach, and Nehal Bhuta. Palgrave Macmillan.

Anthropologist Italo Pardo discusses the interplay between legality, legitimacy, and morality in corruption. Examples include Italy's bribesville scandal, the UK's National Health Service, and ethnographic research with fox hunters. Surprisingly, British anti-corruption efforts lack legislation. The podcast explores challenges faced by entrepreneurs, the perceived illegitimate corruption involving the Labour Party and fox hunting, and the fallout of corruption scandals on trust in democratic institutions.

Sylvia and Aaron interview Professor Michael Herzfeld about his latest book, Subversive Archaism: Troubling Traditionalists and the Politics of National Heritage. Durham: Duke University Press, 2022 . We begin with Dr. Herzfeld's penchant for comparing seemingly disparate cultural settings, settings that, as he argues, share parallel histories of "crypto-colonialism."  To take his latest example, we discuss how mountain dwellers in Greece and urbanites in Bangkok make similar subversive claims against their states by positioning themselves as the authentic protagonists of their nations' celebrated traditions. We fit this discussion into Dr. Herzfeld's larger body of work, especially his arguments about the embarrassing forms of "cultural intimacy" (the fellowship of the flawed) that lie at the core of national solidarity.  That brings us to corruption, which Dr. Herzfeld understands as a sort of "political incest" (2018), and to the dirty secret that patronage plays in facilitating national solidarities (and then taking the blame when things go wrong).  Our discussion leads us to corruption in the US and Wester Europe, the need for performative competence when ordering off the menu in Dutch restaurants, and to a brief debate about the validity of "corruption" as an analytic category.  We conclude with a question of fieldwork ethics. Dr. Herzfeld shares his critique of the way Internal Review Boards in the US prevent ethnographers from pressing for answers to hard questions. 

Sylvia and Aaron talk to Kregg about  soy bean cultivation in Paraguay and the role of corruption and anti-corruption measures in rural land struggles.  We  discuss the encroachment of mechanized soy production into subsistence farming, the link between soy cultivation, democracy and anti-corruption, and the effects of anti-corruption measures on campesinos (peasants) who pursue land claims in Paraguay's courts.  Kregg also reflects on the ethics of patron-client relationships (a species of the corruption genus) and the depiction of these "clientelist" relationships in  ethnographic writing. Here are some of Kregg's books:2020 The Government of Beans: Regulating Life in the Age of monocrops. Durham: Duke University Press.2019 Infrastructure, Environment and Life in the Anthropocene. Edited volume with Duke University Press.2011 Guerrilla Auditors: The Politics of Transparency in neoliberal Paraguay. Durham: Duke University Press.

Sylvia Tidey, author of 'Ethics or the Right Thing?: Corruption and Care in the Age of Good Governance,' discusses Indonesian officials caught between Western models of impartiality and familial reciprocity. Topics include anti-corruption projects, nepotism, equity, and fairness. The podcast explores the link between economic trends and corruption in Indonesian history, the language policies of the 'New Order,' and the paradoxical effects of recent anti-corruption policies.

In the second episode of the podcast series, we interview Dr. Daniel Jordan Smith, Professor of Anthropology at Brown University as well as the Charles C. Tillinghast, Jr. Professor ofInternational Studies. Dan is the author of a landmark ethnography of corruption, A Cultureof Corruption: Everyday Deception and Popular Discontent in Nigeria (2007). We discuss this book as well as his latest Every Household Its Own Government: Improvised Infrastructure, Entrepreneurial Citizens, and the State in Nigeria (2022). Dan explains how Nigerians understand corruption, its place in their national culture, and Nigerians' efforts to fight it.  As Dan makes it clear, the “culture of corruption” in Nigeria is as much a "culture against corruption." Daniel Jordan Smith (2007) A Culture of Corruption: Everyday Deception and PopularDiscontent in Nigeria. Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ.Daniel Jordan Smith (2018) “Corruption and ‘Culture’ in Anthropology and Nigeria."Current Anthropology 59(S18): S83–S91Daniel Jordan Smith (2022) Every Household Its Own Government: ImprovisedInfrastructure, Entrepreneurial Citizens, and the State in Nigeria. Princeton UniversityPress: Princeton, NJ.

In our inaugural episode, we talk with Dr. Sarah Muir of the The City College of New York and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). Sarah is a cultural and linguistic anthropologist specializing in Argentina and a long-time advocate for a systematic, anthropological study of corruption. During the podcast, we discuss Sarah’s recent book Routine Crisis: An Ethnography of Disillusion (2021) that explores how ordinary Argentines talk about and diagnose the problem of corruption in their society, especially amidst the 2001-2002 financial crisis.  We learn that talk of corruption as a language for understanding everyday,  interpersonal transgressions, that  corruption is sometimes seen as morally justified, and that Argentines sometimes link corruption to cherished aspects of national culture. In the final part of the episode, Sarah talks about her upcoming work on women’s financial investment groups in Latin America.To read:Sarah Muir (2022) Routine Crisis: An Ethnography of Disillusion. University of ChicagoPress: Chicago.Sarah Muir & Akhil Gupta (2018) “Rethinking the Anthropology of Corruption.”Current Anthropology 59(S18): S4–S15.Sarah Muir & Tiana Bakić-Hayden (forthcoming) “Illiberal Economies: Critique and Ambivalence in a Money Laundering Scheme,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute